#all joking aside everything in this post is 100% my sincere and honest opinions about these movies

[kuiperblog]

Awards that the Academy missed

Now that the Oscars are over, I thought I’d put out my own picks for several categories that didn’t receive proper recognition from the academy:

Best emotional scene where Scarlett Johansson ties someone’s shoes

Jojo Rabbit is an incredibly kind, sincere, and deeply funny movie. It’s hard to be a single mother. It’s even harder to be a single mother in Nazi Germany, especially when your son is enthusiastically pledging loyalty to the Party. Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) hates the Nazi Party, but she loves her son, and we see that no more clearly than in the scene where she squats down to tie Jojo’s shoes and explains the meaning of love. “You’ll know it when it happens. You’ll feel it. A pain. In your tummy. And in your heart.” It is a reminder of just how dependent and inexperienced and naive young Jojo is. In the lands of a lesser performer, this little speech about the meaning of love would have felt a bit too on the nose, but Scarlett Johansson delivers it in a way that makes you forget that she’s not a German mother in the year 1945.

It’s one of the best scenes of the year, almost as good as the Scarlett Johansson shoe-tying scene in Noah Baumbach’s movie about divorce. Winner: Marriage Story

Best movie where Adam Driver plays a character who loses his temper and shares a fraught romantic relationship with a woman who accuses him of being a villain

I don’t think that Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker is a good film. The sequel trilogy is fraught, and watching episode VIII followed by IX felt like watching two different writer/directors wrestle over the direction they wanted the series to take, kicking sand in the face of the audience in the process.  In Episode IX, the plot is barely coherent, the pacing is bizarre, and so many of the creative choices are baffling. Yet, the sequel trilogy has one through-line that constantly works, and continues to work in Episode IX: the relationship between Kylo Ren and Rey. By episode IX, it feels like Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley are carrying the whole weight of this franchise on their shoulders, and their relationship is one of the few things that gets better and more interesting over the course of the trilogy.  Is it love?  Is it hate?  It’s difficult to articulate, and yet they share a connection, bound by some tether of fate or compatibility or chemistry that makes a romance between the two of them seem both impossible and inevitable. Yes, Kylo Ren is a villain, but he also may be the man that Rey loves.

Adam Driver brings a truly excellent performance in Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker.  It’s the kind of performance that makes you wish he could be in a better film, with better material to work with. Fortunately, he got exactly that in one of 2019′s most dramatic scenes, in Noah Baumbach’s divorce movie where Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) screams at Charlie (Adam Driver), “You gaslighted me! You’re a fucking villain!” Winner: Marriage Story

Best movie about the culture of Hollywood and Los Angeles

Tarantino loves making movies that are about movies. He pays homage to so many classic film genres, and every bit of his love for cinema comes across in his movies. Inglorious Basterds was a film about the power of cinema, with a powerful scene coming at the film’s climax that literally takes place in a theater, as film itself is used by a Jewish filmmaker as a weapon against Nazis.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is more deeply concerned with the filmmaking process and the people who participate in it, and I really think that Trudi Fraser (Julia Butters) steals the show with her portrayal of a child actress who, in her own way, reacquaints our protagonist Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) with his love for acting. And the parts involving Sharon Tate are purely about the love of cinema, a throwback to a more innocent time as we watch someone who loved making movies get to see firsthand the joy that her performance has brought to an audience of moviegoers.

Of course, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood isn’t just about Hollywood; it’s about the city of Los Angeles. There’s a scene when night falls and all of the signs across the city light up, and I’m left with the feeling that Tarantino really just enjoys giving us a retrospective tour of Los Angeles. It’s a joy to behold, and the movie constantly reminds you of where you are and why it’s special. It’s a lot like the scenes in another movie from the same year, where a man of New York (Adam Driver) gradually becomes acquainted with the city of Los Angeles, a place where people spend their days in their cars instead of on their feet and people constantly feel the need to remark about how much space there is. Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) discovers that beyond her talents as an actress, she takes quite naturally to the director’s chair, as Los Angeles offers her opportunities that she never could have had in New York City. Winner: Marriage Story

Best movie where the “villain” is portrayed as German, but actually the real villain is the system

1917 is a movie about the brutality of war. It is also a hauntingly beautiful film.

There is a particular shot in the movie, the first scene that takes place after nightfall, where we see flares lighting up the night as a church burns. We see shadows dance across the ground, and the score swells in just the right way, and the scene was just so nightmarish yet so striking that I couldn’t help but have a physical reaction to it. It feels like we’ve stepped into hell on earth, and yet...

So many shots in this movie are simultaneously terrifying yet magnificent in a way that doesn’t undercut the terror of war, but rather, underscores it: these characters inhabit a beautiful world that is tainted by the scars of battle.

There is a moment about halfway through the movie when the main character is confronted with the grim reality of human mortality, and from that moment forward, the specter of death looms over him. Every gunshot he hears -- and that we hear -- is a reminder of his mortality. Every step that he takes, he is surrounded by death, often in the most literal way possible as he finds himself in various settings surrounded by the remains of the fallen.

As we gaze upon fields and rivers and earth littered with death, we are left with the impression that God has given us a beautiful world, and the things that make it ugly -- the machine guns and barbed wire, the crashed planes and mortar craters, the sound of gunfire and the agonized screams of injured soldiers -- are a pox upon that natural beauty, a sort of corruption that could only be wrought by the hands of men.

War is an ugly, wretched, terrible thing, not only because of what it is, but also because of what it robs us of. 1917′s hauntingly beautiful moments give us fleeting glimpses of that.

1917′s plot is fairly minimal, but its basic construction facilitates the anti-war message: the climax of this movie is not about a soldier attempting to win a battle or kill enemy combatants, but to call off an attack in order to prevent soldiers from marching into the maw of death. German soldiers stand in the way of our protagonist’s progress, and he must defeat them in order to carry out his mission, but the Germans are not the real villains here: the true villain of this movie is war itself.

I had similar thoughts watching Laura Dern’s performance in Noah Baumbach’s movie about divorce: true, she is an opportunistic divorce lawyer. She exploits Nicole and Charlie’s pain for her own benefit, and in the end we’re left to think that despite all her claims to feel compassion for Nicole, she was really in it to win to satisfy her own ego. And yet, can we really begrudge her for what she’s doing? She’s a divorce lawyer, and she’s good at her job. It’s hard not to admire her for her sheer competence and work ethic. She is responding to the incentives that the court system has put in place. The messiness of divorce court is not the fault of any single individual; it’s a system that forces good people to do bad things, including the divorce lawyer played by actress Laura Dern, whose German ancestry makes this movie a valid candidate for this category. Winner: Marriage Story

Best movie about human parasites

Bong Joon-ho makes films in a genre that I sometimes have difficulty describing, but maybe if I do a poor job of articulating it you’ll still get the idea of what I’m gesturing at: he makes movies that are about ideas. (As opposed to, say, movies that are about things, or people, or events, or places.)  There were some movies -- good movies, even -- that, when you leave the theater, make you say, “well, that sure was a bunch of stuff that just happened.” I don’t think Bong has ever made a film like that: his movies stay with you.

Every movie is informed by the worldviews of the people who created it, but it feels like Bong creates movies that are intended to specifically communicate a certain worldview -- and yet it never feels preachy, because the stories that he tells seem so real and genuine. Maybe it’s the performances that he’s able to get out of the actors he works with, maybe it’s the way he always seems to let the camera linger just a second longer than other filmmakers would in order to really let a specific emotion hit you.

It feels reductive to describe Parasite as a film about class. It certainly doesn’t seem like we’re meant to agree with the characterization of these members of the “underclass” as mere parasites: they’re clever. They exhibit wit, ingenuity, and if they behave dishonestly and selfishly, it’s only because they’re part of a system that has forced them to be this way. It’s similar to the dynamic presented in Noah Baumbach’s divorce movie, where Baumbach portrays divorce lawyers as parasites who are nonetheless human in a story that feels incredibly true-to-life without being vindictive. Winner: Marriage Story

Best scene (that has also become an internet meme) where a character explains who is winning 

Uncut Gems had me glued to my seat in the theater, and it feels like an incredible cinematic achievement. I felt thoroughly sucked into the world of this movie -- a pretty unpleasant sensation, all things considered. Many shots give an incredible sense of claustrophobia. The camera work gives off a constant sense of frenetic energy that just makes you feel tense. The characters are all incredibly abrasive, and the actors all deliver world-class performances that completely sell that abrasiveness, all while talking over each other: no piece of dialog feels like it has room to breathe. Everything about this movie feels incredibly and unpleasantly crowded. It’s kind of amazing. It’s artfully done and incredibly immersive, but the world that it immerses you in is so unpleasant that I’m not surprised it got a relatively poor Cinemascore: this movie does not scratch the itch that typical moviegoers are used to having scratched, and in fact the main level it operates on is by making you itchy and refusing to scratch that itch. The ending of this movie is perfect, but it’s definitely not a crowd-pleaser that is going to leave you with a grin on your face as you leave the theater. I want to make it clear: these are all things that I love about this movie.

Adding to the visceral sense of unpleasantness is the fact that the film not only immerses you in a specific place (the diamond district of New York), but the perspective of a character who is pretty twisted, and lives an adrenaline-fueled life where every hour day is spent performing the incredible balancing act of borrowing money from one party to pay off his debts to another: it’s enough to give you second-hand anxiety as he weaves his way through a mess of loan sharks, trying not to lose his skin in the process. It’s like watching someone sprinting on a tightrope while juggling knives.

Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is a deeply flawed man with practically zero admirable or redeeming qualities, and yet he’s rendered in such incredible fidelity that everything about him feels believable -- and being thoroughly immersed in his perspective makes him deeply fascinating. Throughout the movie, I felt myself wanting to understand this character and what made him tick, and the movie delivers that in its third act with a scene of the variety that I like to call “the scene in the movie where the main character explains what the movie’s themes are.” If that description sounds reductive and dismissive, it’s not because I mean it to be that way: I love this scene. Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) explains to Kevin Garnett (Kevin Garnett) what it is that makes him tick in a language that Garnett (and we, the audience) can understand: this anxiety-riddled thrill ride? This isn’t just the cost of doing business for him; he lives for this. “This is my fucking way. This is how I win.”

It’s a scene that’s almost as memorable as the line from Marriage Story where, in the midst of a fight between two people who are divorcing each other, Charlie (Adam Driver) punches the wall and screams, “you’re fucking insane! And you’re fucking winning!” It’s such a memorable moment that it’s no wonder that scene has become such an internet meme. Winner: Marriage Story

Best film of the year

It’s hard to overstate my love for Marriage Story. It’s one of those movies that just oozes competence from every pore, the kind of movie that makes me lean back in my chair and say, “This. This is how movies are supposed to be.” It’s so uniformly excellent that I hesitate to get specific with my praise, because while I can clearly put my finger on things that are great about it, the thing that I really love about it is all the things. I wouldn’t want to focus too hard on any one facet for fear of failing to recognize everything else about it that’s positively superb.

The set design is phenomenal. The film’s use of color is gorgeous. Noah Baumbach handles dialog in a way that makes you think “every movie should be like this.” Randy Newman’s score fits the film’s aesthetic to a T. And of course, the performances. Nearly every actor we see on screen delivers a performance that is Oscar-worthy: the array of character actors bat 1.000, and they’re not even the main event! Adam Driver gives the performance of a lifetime, and probably the only reason I’m not also saying the same thing about Scarlett Johansson is that she has to spend so much time sharing the screen with Laura Dern, who steals every scene that she’s in (based on Dern’s Best Supporting Actress award, it seems the Academy agrees).

Noah Baumbach gets great performances out of his actors, and he’s willing to frame the shot in a way that emphasizes the actor. There are so many shots that left me in awe of just how much confidence Baumbach has in his actors, his sheer willingness to just frame them in the middle of a shot and put the entire weight of a scene on their shoulders, only for them to deliver everything that’s expected of them and more. This film is beautiful from top to bottom, it has so much respect for its characters and it communicates all of that in a way that is just sublime.

Marriage Story is a movie about divorce. It has many incredibly emotional and contentious moments. If you have seen any part of this movie clipped or screenshotted on Twitter, it’s probably the scene of two characters shouting at each other, which really does feel like the performance of the year. I love everything about that scene. Two characters have reached a breaking point, and every bit of animus that has been stewing for the entire duration of their decade-long relationship comes to the surface all at once. It’s enough to make you terrified of what’s going to happen.

I like movies that make me uncomfortable. I like movies that are unsettling and sometimes almost anxiety-inducing, that have fully realized characters, even if those characters are abrasive. I love movies that are deeply immersive and pull me into their world, even if that world isn’t a place that is pleasant. For all of these reasons, if you’ve read this post this far, I think my pick for film of the year should be obvious. Winner: Uncut Gems